Tracing Boston's Gay Artist Culture

With the pornographic quality of the work, some people have said that the "The Boston School," now at the Institute for "Contemporary Art (ICA), is just "A 'gay hustler' show." It can look that way, but such a dismissal does not do the exhibition justice.

Centered around the work of the late Mark Morrisroe, the exhibition also showcases the art of six other artists who lived, worked and studied in Boston in the late '70s to early '80s. David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca ("PL") diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Jack Pierson, Tabboo! (Stephen Tashjian) and Shellburne Thurber, as well as Morrisroe, all knew and influenced each other.

By presenting a range of their works from the '70s to the present, curators Lia Gangitano and Milena Kalinovska show how these artists grew together stylistically and, later, diverged.

The art they produced -- primarily in photography, although they worked in drawing, film, performance and painting as well--offers an intimate look into each of their lives. The members of the Boston School took for their subject matter their friends, families and subcultures often overlooked or ignored. Their articulation of private and deeply personal experience redefined conventional notions of portraiture, documentary, narrative and autobiography.

When the Boston School started taking pictures, photography was still new to the art world. As a school, they are not unlike Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath and the other confessional poets. In much the same way, these artists opened up their lives, and by expressing what was closest to them, they tested the limits of photography as an art form.

Though they have been grouped together as a "school," each of the artists have sufficiently different artistic visions.

David Armstrong, for example, creates elegant, formal pictures of his friends and lovers. The black and white photography and the careful posed manner of his subjects call to mind traditional portraiture. Yet the slow, intent stare of the subjects conveys a sense of the connection between the artist and the people he photographed. In this way, he achieves a kind of autobiographical gesture in his work.

In stark contrast to the polish of Armstrong is Nan Goldin's raw and gritty photographs of friends, family and herself. Together, the photographs form a kind of diary, recording the people and events important to her and preserving the emotional impact of those moments.

The diaristic aspect of photography also appears in the work of Shellburne Thurber. She thinks of her photography as "not only an act of connecting to people but of locking things down." Memory and the expression of affection are integral parts of her work.

Thurber's pictures also possess a fascination with vivid colors and dramatic lighting, a trait that she shares with Philip-Lorca diCorcia. "Pl.," as his friends call him, combines the retirement of Armstrong with Thurber's sensitivity to the nuances of light and color.

In his series on hustlers. Pl highlights the seductiveness of the Other. By taking professional photographs of hustlers from all over America in highly artificial surroundings and poses, he exposes the failure of the American dream. At the same time, the beauty of his play with light, shadow and color reduces his subjects to secondary importance, further emphasizing the disregard for these people in our society.

The preoccupation with color surfaces in the paintings of Tabboo!, who achieves through painting what the rest of the Boston School do through photography. It is unfortunate that the work represented in the exhibition is not Tabboo!'s best, but the pieces at the ICA give the viewer an idea of some of his concerns gay art and the drag subculture. For example, the flamboyant gesture of "Pink," which is a picture of the word "pink" painted in different shades of pink, plays on the association of pink with gay culture.

Jack Pierson produces perhaps the most reserved work of the Boston School. His early photographs try to capture the garis'h surrealism of the "Beat" sub-culture. At that time, he lived in the shadow of Morrisroe and Tabboo!. He only found the relayed confidence of his more recent photography when he cut himself off from them. The languid but controlled poise of his current work gives the sense that he has finally found his niche among these artists.

Finally, there is Mark Morrisroe, the man around whom the exhibition is centered. Half the photographs exhibited are self portraits spanning, the years from 1976 to 1989, when he died of AIDS the intense self absorption, together with the posed, theatrical and exhibitionist aspect of these pictures provides a narrative of his development over those years.

Deliberately careless with his slides, letting them get scratched of dusty, his photographs have an unfinished quality which suited the "punk" image he tried to project. His violent adolescence as a teenage prostitute and his claim of being the son of the Boston Strangler added to that facade.

The rest of his work in this exhibition consists of a wide range of photographs in different styles. Shades of Warhol, Man Ray and Mapplethorpe emerge in these photographs.

At his best, Morrisroe is relaxed but intensely focused, drawing the viewer into his work. He is not afraid to be beautiful, sometimes creating photographs that look more like paintings. However, the undercurrent of pessimism, springing from his experiences, gives his work a complexity and tension that makes one wonder how much more he could have achieved if he had not died at the age of 30.

"The Boston School," which is running at the ICA until December 31, is the first time all of these artists have come together for an exhibition. It is a chance to see their oeuvre as a group and proves much more rewarding than if they were seen on their own. Their individual accomplishments, though distinguished, become even more powerful as we see how they have played off each other.

If nothing else, the introspection and confessions of the artists will appeal to the voyeur in all of us, as we marvel at all the things they have done and the places they have been. And not all of them involve hustlers.

PL's photos of hustlers from across America highlight the seductiveness of the Other.